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I made this piece not really knowing where it would go at first, only knowing that I wanted to document the various ways I travel into the city for school and work. From the subway, to the ferry, to my feet, and buses, this is a daily commute. While I walk I think of the poets and poetries of my past and present. How I got here, where I am going, stuck in between always in motion to both or neither.

This is a paper I presented as part of a roundtable for Ashley Dawson’s Environmentalism from Below, at the CUNY Grad Center

I want to talk about a central concern that Ashley highlights in his chapter on “Reclaiming the Energy Commons”: the fight for energy autonomy, a public power (in both senses of the word) that works toward a just transition away from fossil fuels and toward a grid of renewable energy democratically controlled by the people. In the examples of India and South Africa, we find the confluence of repressive and corrupt governments, profit-driven energy production, and the people caught in between.